Day 6: Whitefish, MT to Glacier NP
July 12th, 2007
After approximately sleeping for 6 hours in the car, we woke up around 6:30am and headed into Glacier National Park. As we entered the park, we decided to drive the Going to the Sun road to look for a campsite for the next four nights. We took pretty much an instant dislike to both Apgar and Sprague Campgrounds. We decided on space 73 in the Rising Sun campground.
On the way to Logans Pass Visitor Center we spotted a mother mountain goat and her baby. This was very cool! Not only was this the first wildlife of the park but the first time seeing mountain goats. Kim was very excited to get some pictures. We spent several minutes watching and capturing the moment on film. It was amazing to watch the baby scampering around. After some time at the visitor center, we went back to shower at the Rising Sun camp store. The showers are amazingly cheap ($1.25/ea) for 8 minutes. When it has been awhile since you showered 8 minutes is a lifetime of hot water! The only strange thing is that there there is only one shower for each sex. It would seem that a park like this would have more amenities than one shower each.
After getting all nice and clean, we had lunch at Two Dog Flats restaurant where again Kim was appalled to see that Bison meat was being served in a National Park. It is so wrong to allow this to be on the menu. During lunch, we determined how to spend the few days we have at Glacier in order to maximize the time. We continued on the Going to the sun road and decided to hike the falls trail. This hike was well worth it. Virginia Falls is amazing and is a wonderful end point. The hike was tiresome for both of us, probably due to the whole sleeping in the car the night before thing.
After the hike, we drove over to the Two Medicine section of the park. This felt like the longest drive ever. In this section we did a short hike to a little waterfall then drove to the lake for a quick view. On the way out we passed a black bear on the side of the road but when we turned around to go back and see it more clearly the bear had scampered away.
We made our way back to our campsite and made chili. While we ate, Scott downloaded our pictures to our travel hard drive so we’d actually be able to take pictures tomorrow. We did not have a camp fire tonight as firewood was $6 for a tiny bundle. Maybe we’ll find a cheaper bundle tomorrow. It’s 11:40pm and time for bed. We are in need of a good nights sleep. Let’s hope that happens.